Baking ware or ovenware prepared from glass has been available for use in the kitchen for over 75 years under the trademark PYREX.RTM.. Initially, the ware was formed from a clear, colorless borosilicate glass. To satisfy the consumers' demand for color, opal ovenware was developed that could be decorated either in solid colors or in patterns of colors. Recently, a clear, transparent glass ovenware exhibiting a brown tint was introduced under the trademark FIRESIDE.RTM.. That product comprises a clear, transparent borosilicate base composition containing a color "package" consisting of cobalt, nickel, and manganese oxides in strictly-defined proportions.
Culinary ware prepared from glass has generally been limited to use in an oven. In 1960, however, Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated), Corning, New York, introduced a white, opaque, glass-ceramic cookware product under the trademark CORNING WARE.RTM. which can be used on the burners on top of a stove, as well as in the oven. Subsequently, color packages have been incorporated into the base compositions therefor, and other opaque glass-ceramic cookware and dinnerware products of different base compositions with different color packages have been devised. More recently, the same company introduced a clear, transparent glass-ceramic cookware product exhibiting a light brown tint under the trademark VISIONS.RTM. which can also be used on top of the stove, as well as in the oven.
Whereas those glass-ceramic cookware products have performed very satisfactorily, there has been perceived need to increase the palette of colors, particularly in the field of transparent ware. Consumer focus groups and marketing trends in general have indicated that today's cookware customers are looking for softer, i.e., less intense, and more neutral colors in their selections for the kitchen. As a result of consumer surveys, it was determined that there was a preference for transparent cookware exhibiting a color comprising a soft yellow with pink overtones. Because a tint having a name carrying a measure of sophistication was desired, the color was chosen after comparing the hues of a number of champagnes such that it can validly be called "champagne".
Those consumer surveys motivated the development of glass-ceramic culinary ware displaying a champagne tint. That ware is described in Ser. No. 08/258,271, supra. As can be appreciated, that development of transparent glass-ceramic cookware exhibiting a champagne tint resulted in the need for coordinating and complementing glassware. Most critically, glass covers were needed to coordinate with the cookware. Although lids for glass-ceramic culinary ware can be fashioned from the glass-ceramic, because the lids, whether used on ware in an oven or on top of stove burners, do not receive the thermal shocks, the mechanical impacts, and abrasive treatments to which the glass-ceramic cookware can be exposed, and because glass parts can be designed, produced, and decorated more rapidly and less expensively than the same parts shaped from a glass-ceramic, covers for culinary ware have generally been formed from glass.
Therefore, the principal objective of the present invention was to develop champagne tinted glassware suitable for use as service ware, tableware, drinkware, and as covers for glass-ceramic cookware to be used in an oven or on top of stove burners.